


Cowtown

by ih8tuberculosis



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, by being so damn encouraging, i just wanted to make a character, just absolute crack now, no longer a oneshot, who would annoy the shit out of arthur
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-07-11 20:37:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19934143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ih8tuberculosis/pseuds/ih8tuberculosis
Summary: Arthur has a guardian angel who insists he's the sweetest and he does not know how to handle this.





	1. Chapter 1

It wasn’t until mid-June that he met her. Until that day, he had thought Charles was being modest when he denied it was his arrow that pierced an O’Driscoll’s head from an impossible angle. He had puzzled for a few days after he outran the law by crossing a bridge that promptly blew up behind him. And when a can of strawberries appeared in his satchel when he had been craving a treat, he had called it old age. 

Of course, he had noticed serendipitous events, but modestly denied the existence of any pattern until the afternoon he had emerged from the crystalline blue of O’Creagh’s run and collapsed on a sun-soaked boulder on its western shore. He had let his eyes flutter shut, admiring the gentle breeze that combed through the exposed hairs on his chest and the soft sun that illuminated the inside of his lids red without burning. 

Peacefully in repose, aware of nothing but the cool spring-fed water evaporating from his warm skin, Arthur Morgan breathed his first sigh of relaxation in what may well have been years. He would only get one. 

A great sputtering cough erupted from the chest-high water below his perch, blowing water droplets on his chest and neck. Still sun-drunk and rubbing the stars from his eyes, Arthur recoiled from the animal in the water and reached for the knife in his satchel, safely placed among the stones above his head. With mild curiosity as to the species of giant fish that could have produced such a splash and the accompanying sound, not unlike that of a human retch, Arthur leaned over the edge of the boulder for a peek. His eyes met a creature about the size of the fish in his imagination, albeit clothed in a small men's union suit, two long braids matted to a tan neck and eyebrow hairs pushed down in comical dishevelment.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, throwing a hand on his boulder, feet paddling inefficiently below, “are you hurt?”

“Hurt?” Arthur asked. He threw a hand over the front of his soaked union suit. A mistake. The lady fish giggled.

“Oh I’m glad. I thought I was too late.”

“Late?” Arthur repeated. What an intelligent conversationalist you are, Morgan. “I, uh, what do you have there?” In the hand that wasn’t thrown up upon his rock, invading his space, and clutching very close to his leg, the girl held in her hand what looked like, well, a stick. 

“Oh, this,” the girl swung it out of the water without noticing the resulting spray. Arthur rubbed the water out of his eyes with a withering look. “It’s for breathing underwater, you see. I saw something like it in a book once, but mine is shit.” She flung it out into the lake, where it landed with a soft plop. 

The motion drew his gaze across the water, where he noticed the changes which few but he would perceive, the rustle of animals moving away from the opposite bank and the faint blur of dust rising low from the hedgerow.

“There they are.” The girl’s encroaching hand caught his wrist and dragged him between his boulder and another that jutted out into the lake. His satchel was soaked.

“Don’t struggle,” she anticipated his resistance. She was right. The bounty hunters crashed through the trees and flanked the lake from either side. Pounding hooves and the squawk of indignant waterfowl told him as much. He would have sensed them coming sooner if not for the distraction, probably. 

“Stop kickin’.” 

The girl sneered at him.

“Stop breathing.”

Arthur wondered what slimy creatures lived in the damp crevices he was pressed into, and if they minded visitors. The lawdogs’ brash voices sounded closer from both sides. Shit. Only a waterlogged Cattleman. 

“Too bad you got rid of your stick.”

“Oh, hush, I’m saving you, idiot.” The girl appeared unbothered. 

Arthur braced himself run between the phalanx of bounty hunters towards the woods, realizing the inevitability of his capture and the danger that this strange woman didn’t seem to understand that she was in. To be gunned down in his underwear. Well, there are worse. 

She took his hand gently, which seemed so strange that it was massively effective in halting him. With her other, she picked up a stone, turned her shoulders, and launched it submarine style into the woods like he had seen some off duty factory kids do when he was a boy and Hosea and Dutch took him to New York. What did they call it? Baseball? Baseball. 

Birds exploded out of a bush a few yards down the bank. How she had seen them there, Arthur did not know. 

“There, over there!” 

The lawdogs took off for the bush, quickly following the trail there over the ridge. 

“They might come back with dogs,” the girl reasoned. Together, they crept out of the lake, and Arthur whistled softly for Bodicea. She pranced out from the thick patch of woods where she had been hiding, her white socked legs plopping breezily behind her. Old girl. She trusted him to weasel his way out of anything. Behind her plodded a more serious Missouri Fox Trotter. Bodicea nuzzled the Fox Trotter’s gray, dappled neck before splitting off to greet her valiant rider. 

“I’m sorry that I cut it so close this time,” The woman handed Arthur a cotton blanket, and he took it without thinking, falling victim once again to her nonchalant authority which slipped past his defenses, irritating him for some reason that he couldn’t quite identify. Her eyes are pretty, like wild carrot flowers. Jesus Christ on a raft, Morgan you fool.

“Miss, have we met?” He let his voice drop from what he considered dumb to what he considered threatening. 

“No, not formally.” Unfazed, the girl wrung out each of her braids on the blanket that she had coaxed over his shoulders. He swallowed hard at the closeness, surprised at the realization that he had not seen so much of a woman in many years. A very strange day for him. 

“I suppose I owe you an explanation.”

Arthur cocked his eyebrow, “I’m listenin’.”

The girl sighed sweetly. 

“Get on your horse, and I’ll explain. But you might think I’m rather strange.” Arthur snorted. Bodicea nudged him as if to reprimand him. 

They rode southwest, and Arthur began to think the woman would renege. When they reached Moonstone Pond, she let out the same sweet sigh. 

“You see,” she began, “I saw you first in Valentine.”

“Hmm.”

“Yes, you let that sad old soldier hug you. It made me laugh, how uncomfortable you looked, and so sweet.”

“Jesus. I thought no one saw that.”

The woman smiled sheepishly. Her baby hairs were drying around her face in a halo of frizzy curls, and freckles overlapped each other as they danced down the youthful line of her cheekbone. 

“I’m sure I’m the only one who did see. I have these binoculars. I like to watch people come and go from the cliffs to the right of town.”

Her face dropped its bashfulness and became quite serious. Arthur did not like this. He did not know why.

“Please don’t tell anyone that I spy like that. I’ve been short on money, lately, so I’ve started to let the sheriff know when I see things. You know, men beating their wives or sheep thieves stealing sheep and whatever else.”

“You must have turned me in about a thousand times then,” Arthur laughed.

“Oh no,” the girl insisted, “I do hate when you do that huffy laugh. You only do it when you’re hating yourself.”

“Is that so?”

“Well, yes, I know. Because I’ve seen you all over Valentine. You got so angry when that huge lug called you pretty boy. I saw you help a woman and her boy to the train station.”

Arthur’s stomach felt hard and sick. 

“Who are you working for? Milton?” His hand hovered above his belt. It was quiet, but not too quiet.

“I’ve made a mistake, I think,” said the girl, eyebrows knitted, downturned eyes sad like a puppy’s. Damn puppies. “I don’t work for anyone. I’m a writer. That’s why I watch people. I want to know about people.”

Arthur kept his face hard. 

“I couldn’t help seeing you around town. You and your gang are the most excitement that have blown into town in ages.”

“Girl, you better stop talkin’ if you know what’s good for ya.”

“Bluff.”

“What?”

“You can be so sweet and good. I know that whether you like it or not.”

Arthur huffed. “So what? You haven’t explained anything to me. Why shouldn’t I shoot you right now?”

The woman looked at him like he was dense. They weren’t even moving anymore, just sitting on the horses in the middle of the path headed south.

“You’re always looking out for everybody else.”

“I look out for myself. I kill people.”

“No you don’t. No one looks out for you. Well.”

“Well, what, girl?”

“Well, I do.”

“The bridge?” 

She laughed. “I love learning new skills.”

“And you shot that O’Driscoll? Prove it,” Arthur, teeth gritted, handed her his bow and arrow. She pulled back on the bow and launched and arrow across the prairie. It hit the top of an oil rig with a resounding metallic clang. 

“But did you like the strawberries?” 

Arthur flushed. 

“I, er, yes, thank you for those. How did you know?”

“Oh, everybody likes strawberries.” Her teeth were very white. They matched the clouds that stretched for miles behind her. The golden prairie grasses tickled the Fox Trotter’s feet. “Do you mind if I call you Arthur? I saw your poster in the sheriff’s.”

He grunted. “I don’t know your name, fish girl.”

“That’s ok.”

Arthur remembered that he was angry again. He steered Bodicea through the yarrow, kicking up red buds and dust. 

“Well, look here fish girl,” he barked. “I don’t know who you’re working for, but you better stay away from me and stop spyin’. I know a few men who ain’t bothered to shoot some busybody woman.”

The girl slowed her horse. The speckled mare turned its head to Arthur along with its owner. Women sure knew how to make him feel a fool. Bodicea shuffled closer to her new friend, thinking they were resting, and laid her head again on the other mare’s neck. 

“Think about it, and you’ll see that I’m not working for anyone. And I’ll be around. Here.”

She handed him a stack of papers. It was a book, unbound but for a carrot flower-blue ribbon that ran through an uneven knife hole in the top left corner of the stack. 

"Cowtown," by Henry Adams, it read. 

“I’m Mr. Adams,” she clarified, grinning jauntily. “And I’m sweet on you Arthur Morgan.”

Her sweet little nose and her small, expressive mouth were suddenly far too close to his own, and when she touched her lips to his, he issued an indignant sound of shock that he would hate to fall upon Micah’s ears. 

As if to prevent his heart attack, she pulled away chastely, but placed her hand on his cheek and rubbed small circles from the corner of his mouth to his cheekbone. Eyes falling shut, he leaned into her hand, but as soon, she was gone. When he opened them again, she was disappearing around the bend, braids whipping behind and whooping with joy and satisfaction that Arthur had not felt himself since he was young with Dutch and Hosea. The sound was swept away by the wind, but the grin that it brought to Arthur’s face was tenacious, and as much as he shook his head, he could not banish it. 

He reached into his wet satchel to examine her book and found three cans of strawberries.


	2. Chapter 2

When he was a boy, Arthur dug a hole in the dust behind his parent’s shack and buried a half-empty matchbook, two penny dreadfuls, and a Confederate half dollar. Lyle pulled a bad job the same night. Most of his memories from that other life were so grotesque and unfamiliar that sometimes he wondered if he’d invented them. There was an anchor in this memory, though, a personal trait that ran like a railroad track from Lyle Morgan’s shack to Horseshoe Overlook. 

When Lyle had returned, he uncorked his last bottle of whiskey, poured it down his throat, and threw the glass at his wife to encourage her to pack with more haste. The rough hand threatening to dislocate Arthur’s shoulder as he was heaved upon the back of their old nag meant that his worldly possessions were far behind him now, one with the dirt. 

Once Lyle was ten years in the dirt too, Arthur went back to the old shack, just curious to see. He hadn’t been able to find the spot, but this wasn’t important. It was the reason why he hid his treasures. Privacy. He hadn’t wanted Lyle to find out that every night he cracked the front door open about a foot, before it hit a creak, to slide out into the darkness and huff the crisp air into his nose and out of his mouth. That he lit match after match by the side of the path, patiently forming the sounds that he thought the letters on the page might make. Flipping the coin up in the air and thinking about how close it came to having worth. Wondering if he ever might. Lyle would mock him, beat it out of him if he knew. 

The trait had not dissolved not with age nor companionship. He never told Mary anything about himself. She knew what she found out when he came to see her with bullet holes in his hat. He and John had nearly strangled each other one summer when Dutch made them share a tent. John had peered over Arthur’s shoulder one too many times while he was writing in his journal. For years after, he thought to impress the girls in town by showing them the pencil lead still stuck under his skin. 

Arthur’s constant, anxious need for privacy pumped through his blood in the waking hours and in his sleep. The tattoo: if they can understand you, they can hurt you. If they know you, they can hurt you. He hadn’t told Dutch he was worried. Now half of Strawberry was dead.

This grudging knowledge of himself, then, was directly at odds with the fact that he could not seem to stay angry. All he had ever wanted was to be left alone, only for some bedraggled young woman to decide to stalk him all over the godforsaken state, she wasn’t working for anyone or she was an idiot, that was clear enough, but she… and she had assaulted him! Right on the mouth.

“Arthur!” Dutch’s authoritative bark snapped him out of his angry reverie. An angry reverie that had left him grinning in the same stupid way that he had been grinning since his encounter with the odd fish woman named Mr. Adams. 

“How’s it goin’ Dutch?”

“Everything would be goin’ a lot smoother with some money, my boy.” Dutch slapped a warm hand to Arthur’s shoulder, but there was a tightness in his eyes that implied he wasn’t feeling social. “Strauss tells me he has some debts that need collecting.”

Arthur grimaced. “Dutch them people don’t have nothing. I only made off with a few trinkets the last time.”

“Are we so comfortable now that we can do without a few trinkets?”

“I know, I know,” Arthur conceded. Dutch’s hand fell from his shoulder stiffly. The older man was sweating under his red velvet vest, and there were nicks on his chin where he had been careless in shaving around his goatee. He looked out of place, here, surrounded by grass and trees. He looked like he belonged in some Blackwater museum. The Robin Hood exhibit. The kind of man Mr. Adams would like to write a novel about.

The Downes Ranch was shabby, but located on a beautiful hill covered in all sorts of interesting plants. Arthur somewhat successfully captured their features in his journal, the pages wrinkled after his adventures the day before, and he was angry again and, subsequently, self-conscious about whether or not she was watching him. 

A rabbit scampered by him. In a smooth motion, he notched a small game arrow and sent it through his prey’s head. It was a good shot, and it would be a good meal for the road home. He was disgruntled to find that sneaky grin on his face, and more disgruntled still to realize that he hoped she had seen the kill. Disgusted to acknowledge the virile thrill that had aroused him when he thought about her watching, he snapped his journal shut and marched towards the ranch, mind closed to emotion, fully prepared to blow off some steam.

His aggressive energy dissipated, then intensified at the garden gate when he was met with the most pitiful, sickly little debtor he had ever seen. Once a man, he was now mostly a corpse, purple bags under his eyes and dried blood on his chin. It seemed that Strauss was determined to make a fool out of him. Arthur gritted his teeth. 

“Come here, you maggot.”

The sick man swung his rake pitifully, and the frailty of the attempt enraged Arthur. He pulled his fist back, aching for the sweet connection of knuckles on flesh. The impact was less than satisfying, hollow even. The man’s brittle skin split like parchment, bright red blood beading from the split, different from the goopy, dark stuff frothing up from his throat and dribbled over his lips. Arthur remembered how the woman had pressed her lips to his. The air then was breezy and clean. Now it was heavy and metallic. She is watching. She is watching me do this. 

Reminded of his agency, unable to dissociate his mind from his stained fist from the faint stench of death hanging over the sick man below, Arthur vomited. Bodicea gazed at him mournfully and hung her head to the dirt.

The damage was done. Some guardian angel. Thomas Downes’ wife and son came hurtling out of the front door, yelling some words that Arthur was too tired to hear. He pulled a few dollars from his satchel and tossed them over the crumpled man’s body. He led Bodicea down to the bank of the Dakota and scrubbed the blood off of his hands and thought about Macbeth. One of Hosea’s favorites, but Dutch never really understood it. 

He ripped a water-stained page out of his journal, and, from memory, drew the Missouri Fox Trotter. He could barely remember what the girl looked like for trying so hard. ‘Dear Mr. Adams,’ he wrote, 

‘Where were you to save me just now? You’re a writer. This my hand will rather the multitudinous Dakota River incarnadine, making the green one red. I am not a good man, but thank you for the strawberries all the same. I read your book. I was rooting for the girl, but you’re right about the American dream. Your writing made me feel something, no doubt, but you are in grave need of a proofreader.

Arthur.’

He dropped the letter off at the post office in Valentine before riding south towards Emerald Ranch to pick off a few stages. He couldn’t return to camp empty-handed. It was slow progress, but he managed to catch a second coach at dusk. As he turned the skittish horses onto the main road, the unmistakable sound of something metal burying itself in something wooden caused him to duck and urge the horses faster. 

There was no pursuit. Arthur, brandishing his Schofield revolver, examined the offending metal object. An arrow. The note attached read, 

‘Dear Mr. Morgan,

A little water clears us of this deed. Well, life doesn’t work like that. You have caused great pain, but I know you want to stop. Stop cleaning your hands in more blood, Arthur Morgan. I can help if you let me. You know where to find me most mornings unless you are galavanting about somewhere dangerous. 

Also, proofreading is for lady writers.

All of my love (the friendly kind between two hardy men, of course),

Mr. Adams

P.S. You are wickedly handsome with that mustache and chops, sir. If I were a lady writer…’

That damn grin.


	3. Chapter 3

“Good morning, sunshine,” she sang without looking up from her binoculars.

Arthur grunted, breathing shallowly in an effort to hide the fact that he was winded from the climb. The dirt was warm. He eased himself onto his stomach, shoulder to shoulder with her, and brought his own lenses to his face.

“I’m glad you decided to come.” 

Arthur grunted again.

“Not much to see.”

“What do you mean? Look, right there.”

He angled his binoculars in the direction indicated.

“I don’t see nothin’.” The view from the cliffs would have been incredible but for the fact that it overlooked the town of Valentine. 

“Oh, maybe you’re blocked by the… here.” She scooted herself by the elbows, rubbing dirt into her Levis and making space for him to see around a clothesline. “Look.”

Arthur lowered his binoculars shot a disgruntled look at his partner. 

“How long have you been lyin’ here watching two dogs hump each other?”

She laughed like Jack did when he caught a toad in his bare hands, and turned toward him, exaggeratedly studying him through her lenses despite the fact that they were stretched out less than a foot apart. She knocked her boots together, brushing dust into the air. Arthur pulled his bandana over his nose and lowered her binoculars. 

“You said you could help me.”

“I can. What exactly do you need help with? From your note, it sounded like you did something bad.”

“Didn’t you see?”

“What do you mean?” She packed her binoculars away in her bag and studied his face.

“You mean you weren’t there at the Downes Ranch?”

“Nope. Never been.” Arthur fell silent and drew his hat farther down over his eyes. Old fool.  
She gazed at him in bewilderment, sensing that she’d upset him.

“Arthur, I don’t follow you around everywhere! Only when there’s talk around town or when I see one of your crew with the law on his tail. How am I supposed to know where you are all the time?”

Arthur scoffed. “I know, I know. You just seem like you know everything, I guess. I look pretty stupid now.”

“What happened, then?” She gently pulled his bandana down from his face and focused her attention on him seriously. 

Arthur shifted, embarrassed by his own naivete and, then, embarrassed anew by the recollection of his behavior towards that poor sick man. 

“I beat on a dying man to try to bleed some money from him.”

“And did you get any?”

“He just bled blood.” Arthur shot a suspicious glance at Adams. She squinted back innocently, the crinkles around her eyes stretching to her freckled temples. 

“Hell, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Don’t know why I came.” He clambered to his feet, brushing the dust off of his chest with more agitation than he meant to betray. 

“Because you need help, and I’m the first mug with enough time on her hands to help you.” Relaxed, she gazed up at him, throwing one hand over her eyes. He knocked his hat down a little farther over his eyes.

“I got sick when I hit him. When I started running with my gang, y’know, there was this grand vision of… staying free I guess, tricking rich folk into giving us money, cheating at cards, helping those that needed helping.”

“And what happened?” She was on her feet now and each step she took toward him made his heart rate increase a notch. 

“It struck me for the first time, then, that we’d lost sight of that. Or maybe that way of life just isn’t possible anymore.”

“Or maybe there never was an upstanding way to be a criminal. Maybe it was all a dream.”

“Maybe. But if it was a dream, then I am too. It’s all I know. I can rob, kill, that’s it.”

She picked up his hand, lying deflated and useless at his side and kissed his swollen knuckles. 

“You certainly are a dream, cowboy.”

He withdrew his hand.

“And you certainly are a Pinkerton, ma’am.” She shrugged. 

“I don’t know how to convince you that I’m not, so, sure, you can operate under that assumption. But I’m not. For the record.”

She looked cute like that, hand on hip, dirty from the ground and standing in an unladylike contrapposto. 

“You did come to my rescue at just the right time,” he snarked, “a little suspicious, don’t ya think.”

She raised her eyebrow and scrunched up her nose. 

“Honestly, though, I do need help. I want to change, but I won’t betray my family. If you think you can help, then I’ll let you. And I figure I can shoot you if you do anything funny.”

She considered this. 

“Do you promise to do what I tell you and earnestly try to improve?”

“Alright.”

“Alright. Meet me here tomorrow, same time. We’ll begin training.” She stuck out her hand, but thinking better of it, withdrew and spit in her palm before offering it to him. Eyebrows raised, he followed suit. As they shook, she pulled him in close to her and placed her hand on his chest. 

“Also, do you think I’m cute?” Arthur’s reaction to lean in a bit further, as if intending to kiss her, shocked him, seeing as his brain was staunchly opposed to the idea. She had set the tone, however, for their meetings ending in an embrace, and he was a man of habit.

“I think you’re strange,” he chose, finally, swallowing and stepping away from her. 

She stuck out her lip.

Arthur looked down at his blue shirt, now wet in a patch.

“What the… did you just do that to wipe spit on me?”  
She grinned and scampered in the direction of the trail. Arthur jokingly pursued, a huge grin spreading over his face, but let her escape. Her peals of laughter echoed down the cliff until she was out of sight. 

That afternoon, after a long hunting trip with Charles, Arthur returned to the Valentine post office to find a letter there addressed to Tacitus Kilgore. He didn’t know why he had checked, and he didn’t know why she had written, but somehow he knew it would be so. He waited until he was in his tent to read it, refusing to admit the excitement of saving it kept him smiling the whole ride home. 

‘Dearest Tacitus,

I must apologize for my inability to deliver this letter in the more efficient mode that I employed for our previous correspondence. I write now only to say that what I said in that note, I stand by now. I believe that you are capable of changing and deserve to be someone you can make peace with. You mentioned loyalty. I also believe that anyone who really cares for you would want this for you, as well. I look forward to our meeting tomorrow morning.

On a more serious note, I hold no grudges that you refused to admit I am cute, (several physiological factors betray you anyway) but to call me strange is quite out of line. I was about to give you strawberries just then but decided against it for obvious reasons. I am eating them now. The Pinkerton comment, I can not hold against you, but one of these days I will figure how to prove my sincerity to you. I hope it will be through passionate and generous lovemaking.

Fondest wishes for the next twelve hours,

Dotty

(My real name sounds much less presidential than my nom de plume…)’

He was still grinning as he folded the letter and tucked it under his mattress.

“Why you blushin’ over there English,” cried Sean.

“Thinkin’ about your mam’s old bloomers again,” Arthur hollered back.

“It must be that Mary.” He overheard Ms. Grimshaw’s disapproving comment. Abigail nodded knowingly. 

With a sinking feeling, Arthur suddenly hoped that he’d never have to explain any of this to anyone. Underneath, though, playing in his belly, was hope, an emotion that hadn’t lived within him in years. She thought he could change. Whatever she was, and whatever he was, and whether or not there was a Pinkerton ambush waiting for him in the morning, she thought he could live his life in peace. 

And, thought Arthur smugly, she wants to make passionate and generous love to me. Intriguing. Unable to banish these thoughts, he drifted off to sleep that night thinking about white teeth and expressive eyes and the genius on the Pinkertons' part of instating female agents. Milton's ass didn't look nearly as good in a pair of Levis.


	4. Chapter 4

“God damn it, now you have got to be yankin’ my chain, Pinkerton.” Arthur clutched his knee and, grunting, dislodged his foot from the bayou mud with a slimy pop. Dotty continued to trailblaze a few yards ahead of him, shuffling in an effective sort of cross country skiing motion. She was visibly unarmed today, unless she had a knife tucked away on her person.

“Don’t tell me you can’t complete step one, Arthur,” she threw over her shoulder.

Disconcerted, Arthur eyed the left bank, where an alligator sat, relaxed on its haunches, yellow eyes smugly appraising his nutritional value. 

“I’m weighing the costs and benefits of step one,” he grumbled, “and I ain’t sure it’s worth completing.”

Dotty finally stopped long enough for him to catch up, throwing a glance back at him that seemed to say she didn’t know what all the fuss was about. 

“Lesson one. It’s about the journey, not the destination. After all, what is life but a long journey to which the final destination is death?”

Arthur conceded.

“When you arrive at this final destination, wouldn’t you like to take pride in how you - oh! There it is, Arthur!” She slogged faster, elbows swinging at her sides. 

“I feel like you’ve walked through a bayou once or twice before.”

“Yes, of course, it makes for wonderful exercise. Here.” The girl shook the cakey mud off of her boots as they reached a small bank, and, reaching around a mossy tree, plucked a pale yellow flower.

“Voila, vanilla.” She placed the small bud gingerly in Arthur’s large, calloused hands. He held it with no paucity of bewilderment, as if it were a newborn baby.

“And why couldn’t we just buy some rosewater for the flavor? That would be fancy enough for Abigail and more.”

“No, no, Arthur. Vanilla is very exotic. Your friend Abigail, she is a mother, you said.”

“Well, yes, she has a little boy.” He abruptly handed the bud back to Dotty, anxious to avoid crushing it, lest she force him to find a new one.

“Don’t you usually enjoy discovering new plants?” 

Arthur barked a laugh.

“Sure, but I tend to respect private property when it belongs to gators.”

“Anyway,” Dotty continued, unfazed, “your friend Abigail has had a hard life. She cooks and cleans for a group of sweaty, dirty, bloody men, and when she is finished, she has to take care of a little boy. The father of her child is no help at all. In fact, he’s much like another child.”

“Agreed.”

“Imagine how trapped she must feel in the quotidian.”

“Oh, I know exactly how that feels, I think,” nodded Arthur, wrestling his boot out of a sinkhole. Dotty huffed.

“No, not literally trapped in mud. I mean, she must feel... bored, tired, unappreciated.”

“Sure. So if, for her birthday, we bake her a cake with an ingredient that we had to risk our necks to get, she will know I appreciate her.”

“Exactly.” Dotty beamed at him, and a flush spread up his neck. She laid her hand on his arm, causing him to sink farther into the bog, but she didn’t seem to notice. 

“Furthermore, I hope that such an exotic treat will give her a moment of pleasure away from the drudgery of everyday life.” 

“I see what you’re sayin’. But, look, the rest of the camp, well.”

“Well, what?”

“Well, I’m supposed to be the tough one. I can’t bake another man’s woman a goddam cake.”

“No. I was thinking you could do your John a favor as well.”

“My John? Jesus.”

“Address the cake to Abigail from John. With endless love or, no, spicier. I don't know, be creative.”

“Not bad, Pinkerton.” 

This was step one, apparently. As Dotty had explained to him, as a naturally sensitive and observant person, it was only natural that he should become frustrated when he continuously packed away his feelings of empathy in order to complete the unfeeling tasks laid at his door. Her solution was an exercise in which he had to envision the point of views of some people in his life and then do nice things for them. 

Arthur still wasn’t so sure about any of this, but that morning on the Valentine cliffs, as she scribbled away in her notebook, he surprised himself with how easily old stories fell from his mouth and painted her pages with insights about everyone he had ever known. He restricted his anecdotes to harmless stories that a Pinkerton would have no use for, and if she was frustrated by this, she had fantastic acting abilities. 

Despite Arthur’s best intentions, he began to doubt that any Pinkerton would spend this much time undercover, prying him open. He also found that, whenever Dotty marched ahead of him, as she did now, with her unflagging sense of purpose, he fooled himself into thinking he had one too. 

With these thoughts, he brought himself back to the present moment, the one in which he was resigned to baking a vanilla cake for Abigail’s birthday, and the one in which Dotty was marching straight for an alligator hidden in some brush.

“Dotty!” Arthur rammed into her perpendicularly, throwing them both out of the path of the predator and into the black sludge. The alligator waddled out of the bush and snapped its muscled jaw twice. Arthur froze. Her body tensed under his. Arthur felt for his gun. He only had a revolver. It would have to do. The beast swung his head toward them. First the yellow eye, then the flared nostril, then the wicked teeth. Arthur pulled the hammer slowly, knowing even the slightest metallic sound might escalate the situation irreparably. 

Immense mugginess intensified as a ray of sun burned through the clouds. The alligator seemed to yawn, then, swinging its head back, teeth, then nostril, then, finally, sleepy yellow eye, it lumbered back into the bush. 

Arthur yanked Dotty to her feet, and, together, they tripped through the bayou as fast as they could manage. 

When they reached the opposite bank, Dotty threw her arms around him and squeezed so hard he could barely breathe. He held her until her grip loosened, and when she looked up at him, he noticed that she was crying. 

“Hey,” he said, wiping her cheeks and tilting her chin up high, “You’re alright, girl. You still got those flowers?” She nodded and thrust the vanilla at him. The blooms were pathetically muddy and mushy from her clutch. He couldn’t help but crack a smile at the sight of them, and when she noticed his sly grin she laughed earnestly. They were both caked in mud as well.

“Sorry. C’mon, let’s go into town and get a bath. I’ll extract what we need from these.”

Saint Denis was not Valentine, and two different hotels turned the pair away from their precious porcelain bathtubs until, finally, the concierge at the third hotel allowed them to bathe as long as they first allowed a bellhop to spray them down behind the stables. 

Arthur luxuriated in his steaming bath for longer than he had intended, torn between contentment and a nagging worry in the back of his mind that Dutch would be wondering where he was. When he climbed out of the bath, he realized that his clothes were missing, so wrapping a towel around him, he ventured into the hall barefoot. 

The bellhop who had sprayed him down gulped as he blatantly examined the array of bullet scars that decorated Arthur’s chest. So much for a low profile.   
“You- your wife is upstairs, sir. Room 204. She sent your clothes away to be laundered.”

Arthur climbed the stairs, then, away from the bellhop’s prying eyes, leaned against the wall to think. Would she be waiting for him? Presumably, with no clothes? He paced back and forth at the top of the stairs. How would he refuse her? 

His face blanched as his imagination caught up with his logical mind, and he imagined the scene within room 204. Oh, lord, would he refuse her?

He had to. These were his rules, and they were in place for a reason. He realized he had stopped pacing and was standing rigidly at the top of the stairs, gripping the banister. 

“Are you alright, sir?” called the bellboy, “it’s to your left.”

“I got it, thanks,” Arthur snapped back. Determined, he hoisted his towel tighter around his waist and marched into room 204. 

“Oh, hello,” Dotty said, taken aback at the intensity of the entrance. She was poring over the vanilla pods on an oak desk, one towel wrapped around her and the other twisted up over her hair. A cloud of what smelled like sweet moonshine slapped him in the face. He recovered quickly, but a small smirk tugged at the corners of her mouth, and he knew that she knew and cursed that bellboy right to hell for his suggestive phrasing.

“Smell,” she commanded, and he let her raise the jar to his nose. The scent was sweet and heady, and the dark vanilla beans were oozing amber liquid into the alcohol. Arthur’s eyelids dropped with the weight of the sensation.

“Powerful, isn’t it? My mother was a chemist, of sorts. She taught me everything I know about perfumes and medicines and such.” 

“And where’d you learn to shoot a bow like that?”

“My father. He was quite the outdoorsman.”

“They must be very proud of you.” There was no bitterness.

She turned her head up to where he was leaning over the back of her chair.

“They were.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s alright. People get sick. I miss them, though, every day.”

“They taught you well. I haven’t seen anything yet that you can’t do.” Arthur watched a blush spread high in her cheeks and down her neck, exposed to him from where her baby hairs peeked out of her towel, down the line of her shoulder, and along her collarbone. She turned her head back to the project on the desk.

“I’ll tell you Arthur Morgan. I have a hard time living in the real world. Like today when I almost got us killed. I’m terribly sorry. Sometimes I get too caught up in the story of things to see the reality of things.” She swirled the jar. Amber liquid twisted and melded with the water and alcohol. The mixture was dark, now, like tea left to steep too long. 

“I’m tired of the reality of things,” Arthur dipped his finger into the syrup and blotted it behind her ear. He trailed the rest of it down her neck, admiring the goosebumps that he left in his wake, “And I like your stories.”

He held his breath, surprised by his own boldness, but, gracefully, she craned her neck to accommodate him, and he allowed himself to be drawn in. She sighed when he buried himself in the crook of her neck, and, as drunk as he was from the scent, he knew he must hear that again. So he kissed her there, as light as he could, at first, but the smell of her and the taste of her and the warmth of her pulled him under until he was devouring her. 

A knock at the door dragged him like a drowning man from the drink. 

“Entering with laundry.” The bellboy strode into the room, ignorant of any tension, and deposited their clothes on each nightstand without a hint of urgency. Dotty’s neck was inflamed both from the onslaught and from the rush of her own blood. Her eyes were dilated, and her chest heaved still. Arthur knew he looked exactly the same.

He was tempted to tell the boy to leave, that they would not be disturbed. He wanted to say this and see how her lips would part and her skin would prickle in anticipation. 

When the door closed, he quickly pulled on his clean clothes. 

“We’d better head back at sunrise, or else they’ll miss me at camp,” he said, tossing a pillow and the sheet on the creaky floorboards. “You take the bed.”


End file.
